Staff crunch plagues city forensic dept

Accidents are almost a regular affair on the fast lanes of the city’s roads and expressways. Even though in most cases the mishaps turn out to be fatal, the Gurgaon police do not have the manpower to prioritise the extraction of forensic evidence from the scenes of the accidents.

“Ever since I got attached to Gurgaon, the cops have never called me to a crime scene where a death has occurred due to a road accident. I was earlier stationed in Palwal and there the police used to call me to all such crime scenes. Ideally, a forensic expert should be called at all such sites,” said Vinod K Singh, the sole forensic expert in Gurgaon, who was formerly the in-charge of the mobile forensic unit in Palwal.

“The police do not generally call forensic experts at such crime scenes as it is the job of the crime investigation wing. The wing should be called in to collect evidence such as blood spots and then send it to the forensic lab, but that, too, does not happen usually in accident cases,” said Maxwell Pareira, former joint police commissioner of Delhi (traffic).

“Ideally, the police should secure the crime scene, cordon it off, and call in the forensic experts as all the evidences need to be collected scientifically. They are the people to take into account all the factors which, among other things, may prove to be the difference between causing death by ignorance or culpable homicide,” said Deepak Mathur, a forensic expert with General Hospital, Gurgaon adding, “The Forensic Science Laboratory is already over-burdened due to manpower shortage.”

Singh also conceded that police desisted from using the expertise of forensic experts at the crime scene owing to manpower crunch. “Given the expanse and sensitivity of Gurgaon, there should be an entire forensic division comprising assistant director, senior scientific officer, senior scientific assistant, scientific assistant and lab assistant. Only after such a division is constituted, will the police be able to function properly,” said Singh.